Subscribe to Blog via Email
November 2024 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
What can be most easily seen that change is constantly going on in a living language?
If you’re detecting change with your eyes: New vocabulary, then semantic shifts in existing words, then syntax — particularly syntax of individual words. fun became an adjective within my lifetime.
If you’re detecting change with your ears: all of the above, then maybe phonetics. But sound change is slower, socially and generationally stratified, and geographically uneven: most people don’t realise it even if they’re in the middle of it.
Pragmatics, phonology and morphology are much slower moving, though of course they change too.
Leave a Reply